Monday, July 1, 2013

Editorial: Silly is as silly does

So for the unnamed editor the silly story of a teevee personality getting caught saying the N word is a "saga"?

After building up this person in repeated royal terms, he attempts some Rodney King language at the end, in which he equates racist hate speech with schoolyard taunts.

The inadvertent self-satire here is inescapable.

Could he really be this misinformed?

Prescott Councilman and frequent letter-writer Jim Lamerson tries to challenge Tom Cantlon on the facts, and just can't seem to find one.

Lamerson writes, "To begin with, it is difficult indeed to attack the facts of the "Fast and Furious" debacle, in which our government, under President Obama, armed foreign drug cartels, an act which cost the life of at least one American Law Enforcement Officer, Brian Terry."

Well, it's not all that difficult. Our government, under President Bush, tried to trace weapons routes by selling them, and it didn't go well. When Obama found out about it, he stopped it. Just fact.

Lamerson describes the Benghazi attack as "grievous incompetence or sickening self-interest on the part of President Obama's administration," of course presenting no facts at all. The facts are that it was a surprise attack on an unlikely target. Blaming Obama for that is desperately silly.

In naming "the IRS, spying on American citizens" the Councilman manages to conflate the IRS non-scandal with NSA data-mining against American citizens. The facts: the IRS investigation of nonprofit status covered more progressive and politically neutral groups than it did conservative groups, and no conservative group was impeded from conducting political activity in any way. The NSA programs are rooted in the Patriot Act, which Lamerson happily supported when the Bush Administration imposed it on us.


Finally, Jim's misfiring killshot is that "President Obama, along with his supporters in Congress, passed an ordinance declaring governmental supremacy over individual choice for healthcare." (An ordinance?) The fact: Congress passed and the administration has instituted a program that changes nothing about your existing health-care coverage and offers the choice of coverage to millions of us who could never access it before.

Could this community leader really be so completely misinformed about these issues? What does it say about his ability to evaluate information related to the issues he addresses as a Councilman? What does it say about our media pandering to people who are similarly, aggressively misinformed?

Yarnell Hill fire and local coverage

The Yarnell fire story poses a special challenge for our local news providers, including the Courier. With national media covering the ongoing story, our local reporters will be pressured to step up their games and dig out the details that only local connections and knowledge can reveal. For the editors it's an opportunity to prove the paper's relevance and competence with the sort of "real" life-and-death news that they don't often face.

Our hearts go out to the residents of Yarnell and the families and comrades of the firefighters for their grave losses.